Bookburners The Complete Season Two

by Max Gladstone

“And what happens if we do unplug it? Does everything go back to normal? Do the people …”

  Opie’s fingers, several feet away, spread wide. “Hard to say. Never done a hard shutdown before. But I sure as hell hope so.”

  “How would you try?”

  “You have to be inside the system, mate, as I said.” Opie’s eyes slid over toward Liam. “Try to hack in and issue a shutdown that way.”

  Frances’s fingers flew to the silver cross around her neck. “Do you mean we have to be … infected? A part of the hive mind?”

  “Nah, that isn’t necessary,” Opie replied. “Won’t happen if you’re careful, and if you work fast enough. Not if you’re shutting the system down instead of using it.”

  “Bed-and-breakfast with a red door, got it.” Liam scanned the street. “Is it close by?”

  “What if it doesn’t have a door anymore?” Frances asked. “Things have changed around here. As you might have noticed.”

  Asanti smiled her soothing, maternal smile at Opie one more time. “Roger, is there anything else we should know?”

  “There is one more thing,” Opie said. He crumpled his face up, eyes shut, like a used tissue. “Something is coming. A blossoming.”

  Liam raised a boot again and nudged Opie. “And by that, you mean?”

  “The Hive is growing a … like a seed pod. Right now magic is confined to a small area—”

  “Small?” Frances interrupted.

  “—just around Middle Coom. But after the blossoming, seeds will go everywhere. The whole county will become part of it, for sure, and there’ll be new patches of magic spreading hundreds of miles away.”

  “How long until that happens?” Asanti asked.

  “I don’t know,” Opie said. “The Hive—it doesn’t have a very good sense of time. Maybe an hour. Maybe a day.”

  “We’ve heard enough,” Liam said. “Let’s go looking for this red door.”

  “Not yet.” Asanti stood and brushed her skirt straight. “We need to find the rest of the team and warn them about this blossoming, and about the danger in letting survivors disperse. Then we can find the red door and see if we can still shut this down.”

  Frances jabbed at Opie with her lancet, then collected the dab of blood in a small vacuum tube. He cursed at her in richly textured idiom.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.” And then she followed Asanti and Liam toward the edge of town.

  “Wait—where are you going?” Opie called. “Aren’t you going to end my suffering? I don’t want to be a part of the Hive—I don’t care about any of these people! I don’t belong here!”

  “Not feeling it, sport,” Liam called back.

  Opie’s howls of rage followed them down the street, but to Liam it was as sweet as chamber music.

  • • •

  Sal, Grace, and Menchú huddled inside the van, drooping like last month’s bouquet. As they waited for Team One, they watched the border between the world they knew and the one where magic ran wild draw closer. High tide coming in, and it was going to be one for the record books. A hundred-year flood. Maybe a thousand-year flood.

  “We should try something else,” Sal said after a while.

  “What?” Grace asked.

  “There has to be something we can do. There’s always something we can do.” Sal watched the shimmering advance of the magic border. Now that she was watching for it, she could see it creeping closer and closer. As unstoppable as the ocean.

  Menchú didn’t look up from where he sat, hunched over the steering wheel. “Not always.”

  A low rumble started, and then a military transport vehicle crested the rise.

  “Looks like the cavalry are finally here.” Grace said it with the matter-of-fact delivery of the gallows. Sal wondered if Grace was ever maudlin.

  “Guess we should go say hello,” Sal said.

  The three of them slid out of the van and into the afternoon. A cold fog was rolling in from the ocean as the day began to die, leaving Sal with the uncomfortable sensation that all her clothes were damp. It was going to hurt visibility, too, if it came to fighting in the streets, or whatever Team One had planned.

  She wondered what was keeping Asanti, Liam, and Frances. Whatever it was, it definitely hadn’t shut down the Network’s shining masterpiece yet. And it was taking a terribly long time.

  The Team One personnel vehicle pulled to a stop just short of them. It was followed by another five vehicles, two more for personnel, and the others shrouded with camouflaged tarps. Sal wondered, uneasily, if the jokes she’d heard about Team One and their nukes weren’t jokes, after all. She wondered if this was the right time and place to deploy one.

  She resolutely didn’t think about Mrs. Graham, or the Hong Kong tourists, and especially not the toddler, Pia. They were talking corpses. Not people. Already lost.

  Thavani Shah stepped out of the passenger door of the flag vehicle, neatly pressed and alert. “Brief me,” she said.

  Menchú guided her to the bluff overlooking the little town. It was close to being engulfed by magic now. “We’ve conducted a search for survivors and come up mostly empty,” he said. “And we’ve determined that the area of effect is increasing rapidly.”

  Shah’s eyes snapped to him. “Increasing? How rapidly, Menchú?”

  “Hard to say. It was growing by maybe two meters per hour when we first got here, but it’s come about ten more in the last hour.” He cleared his throat. “The border expanded to recapture some survivors when we brought them out. I don’t think anyone can leave.” His hand strayed to the silver cross around his neck, the only thing protecting him from the same fate.

  “Shit. Have you had any luck in finding the source of all this and closing it off?”

  Menchú shook his head slowly. “We’ve been waiting for the rest of our team to report, but we haven’t heard from them yet,” he said. “You’re not moving in already, are you?”

  Shah shrugged. “They’re safe from us for now. Our orders are only to contain.”

  “For now.” Menchú took a deep breath. “I’ll need to go a lot farther out to update Monsignor Angiuli. There’s too much interference here.”

  “Then do it,” Shah said. “We’ll establish a perimeter, and then I’ll set up a command post far enough for telecoms to work. I’ll be with you shortly to see if we need to do anything else.”

  Anything else: like destroy the town where it stood, and all the people left in it. Team One’s raison d’être wasn’t mere containment, after all; their purpose was destruction.

  As Menchú threaded through the caravan, members of Team One began to spill out of their vehicles. They stretched and slapped each other on the back, and then they began to suit up with their mismatched pieces of armor, weapons from unknown and unnameable origins.

  Menchú climbed up and away from town.

  • • •

  From almost any vantage point in the hills, Menchú had a lovely view of the seaside town. This was not the solace it would have been at any other time. He couldn’t help but picture it as it would almost certainly become: mounds of smoking rubble and ash. Hopefully it would be smoking rubble and ash, anyway. For the first time, he wondered what would happen if Team One couldn’t destroy this threat. This was no magical beast to slay. Would the hair and feathers and meat turn to ash, but the magic remain? Would it grow out of control, until the whole world was this terrible amalgam of normal and bizarre?

  There was only one way to find out. Forward and through. He took out his cell phone and dialed. With luck he’d be far enough from the magical radius to get through.

  Monsignor Angiuli answered immediately, as if he’d been waiting for his phone to ring. “Arturo? We were just wondering when we would hear from you.”

  “We?”

  “I’m here with Hilary Sansone. We’ve been strategizing about how Team Two will handle this situation—we were thinking we would cover it as the accidental release of a hallucinogenic chemi
cal. Something to explain away witness experiences and personal harm done.”

  “That assumes,” Menchú said heavily, “that there will be witness experiences to cover up. And I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”

  “What? What are you saying? Are they all dead?”

  “We’ve found a few survivors,” Menchú said. “We even almost rescued a few.” He summed up their time in Middle Coom so far.

  “They’re trapped,” he concluded. “The magic zone grows to reclaim anyone who leaves, and the result when it catches up is horrific. For all we know there are dozens of people alive, maybe hundreds that we never found, but there’s no way to get them out. I’m at a loss for how to proceed, Monsignor. I hate to say it, but perhaps this is a matter for Team One now.”

  “Wait. There might be hundreds alive?”

  “Alive, but lost,” Menchú said. “Engulfed by magic. We still have Asanti searching for the Network’s base here, but we don’t know what’s become of her. It’s been hours since we’ve heard.”

  “Do you think the town must be destroyed?”

  “Monsignor, we may have no choice. But it is, of course, your decision. How do we proceed? Should we turn the situation over to Team One? Should we go looking for Asanti and the others?”

  Shah came up the hill, watching Menchú with the keen interest of an apex predator.

  Angiuli was silent for long moments. “Wait for your team, and then we’ll decide what to do when all other options are exhausted.”

  “How long do we wait?” Menchú asked, but from the silence at the other end, Angiuli was already gone.

  “What happened?” Shah asked, voice sharp. She raked a hand through her salted hair. “Change of plans?Are you going back in?”

  Menchú’s hand shook as he put the phone in his pocket. “Nothing. He told us to wait and see if the rest of my team makes it out.”

  She shook her head. “I’d go in after them, but my orders are only to secure the perimeter. You know that. I’m sorry.” She spared a look toward the bubble, the patch of pink sky, the oncoming fog. “Really sorry.”

  5.

  When Menchú returned to the Team One encampment, Sal greeted him with a wave. “So Team One goes in now, guns blazing, and we all go home? World saved for another day?”

  “Not exactly.” Menchú’s voice was tight. He put his hand in his pocket, running a thumb along the side of his phone. “Angiuli needs more time to decide.”

  There was one small blessing: The rest of his team was returning. Sal met them halfway as they trudged up the hillside. “Hey! Hey, took you long enough. We were getting worried.”

  “We’ve been busy,” Liam said.

  Asanti peered into the empty van with consternation. “Where are the survivors?” she asked. “Did you already send them away?”

  Menchú’s shoulders were bent from the weight of uncounted souls lost to magic. “There aren’t any.”

  Asanti looked—relieved? “Good. We can’t let anyone out of town. It’s almost like an infection, and it will spread if—”

  “We know. Anyone we take out expands the field even faster,” Sal told her.

  “How did you know? What did you find?” Menchú asked. “Anything useful?”

  “We found Opie.” Liam was glum. “Well, we found pieces of him, anyway.”

  Sal’s brow furrowed. “Dead?”

  “Poor bastard was still alive, more’s the pity. But he was feeling awfully chatty, so we chatted a good long while.” Liam hitched a thumb toward Middle Coom. “He’s still there if you fancy a one-on-one.”

  “Did he tell you anything we can use?”

  “Maybe,” Asanti said. “He told us where their headquarters were. If we could get inside, and if we could retrace their steps, there’s a chance we could close everything down. And we’re running out of time, Arturo. He said there’s a ‘blossoming’ coming. It sounds like the second wave of this thing is a magical explosion, and if it happens, there won’t be any containing this. It might be the end of the world as we know it.”

  Menchú scrubbed at his forehead. “Do you think you can do it?”

  Asanti shrugged. “With more time and all the resources of the Vatican at our fingertips, there would be no question. As is? Liam and I working together have a solid chance. I know the magic, and he knows the Network intimately. It doesn’t come without risk, of course.”

  Menchú’s fingers closed more tightly around his phone. The tiny muscles were cramping up. “What kind of risk?”

  “The most likely risk is losing Liam to the Network for good. There’s … a fair chance of that; he’s known to be susceptible. There’s a smaller chance of losing me, too. And I suppose it’s possible that if we screwed up wildly enough, the system would take everything we know about magic and grow exponentially faster, or blossom sooner.”

  “Faster than it is now?” Grace was nonplussed.

  “Think miles in an hour, not meters,” Asanti answered. “What do you say?”

  Menchú took out his phone. “We need to talk to Monsignor Angiuli. This might be out of our hands now.”

  Shah lit up a cigarette and stared down at Middle Coom. “No hurry. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll call Angiuli again,” Menchú said. “I don’t know how else to proceed.”

  “Those are going to kill you one day,” Sal said, nodding at Shah’s cigarette.

  “Right,” Shah said, dry as the desert. She kicked lightly at the blood-spattered tuft of grass where Menchú had been attacked by a transformed fisherman earlier in the day. “That’s the thing that’s going to kill me.”

  • • •

  Menchú came down the hill twenty minutes later, pinched and pale.

  “What’s the story? Are they ready to give the word?” Shah asked him. Menchú chewed on his lip. “No. It seems Angiuli is having … doubts. He told us to continue to wait. He’s still deciding.”

  “What do we do?” Sal looked from Shah to Menchú to Asanti and back again. “We can’t do nothing.”

  Shah exhaled, slow and steady. “I can’t do anything but guard the border until I hear from my superior. Or someone higher than my superior.”

  Asanti stared at the copper cup in her hand. “We can’t do nothing.”

  Liam stuck his shoulders back. “Let’s do it. Let’s try to hack in,” he said. “Opie told us how, so we may as well try it.”

  “Liam.” Asanti was firm, kind. “You don’t have to do this. None of us will make you, after everything you’ve been through already.”

  Liam kicked hard at a tree not yet scarred by magic. “Don’t see that I have a choice. We can’t do nothing.”

  “I could try it,” Frances said. She took off her glasses and began to polish them on the hem of her blouse. “I’ve been studying the Network, and as you know, I’ve taken a keen interest in what they’ve done to you, Liam. Strictly out of professional curiosity,” she added hastily. “Perhaps Asanti and I can operate under your guidance and minimize the risk to all of us.”

  Menchú looked to Asanti. “Would it work?”

  Asanti chewed in her lip. “Well, it might. The chances aren’t too bad.”

  “What if I get the order to strike?” Shah asked. “I won’t be able to wait to get you out of there.”

  “Don’t remember asking you to.” Liam thrust his chin up.

  “Fine,” said Menchú. “The three of you go back in, and we’ll turn a blind eye. Shah, even if you do get the order … can you track their location and hold fire until they’re out?”

  Shah nodded. “We can do that. But the three of you—you start hearing booms, you run the hell out of there. I won’t be able to wait forever.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Grace asked.

  “We do what Angiuli told us to do,” Menchú answered. “We wait.”

  • • •

  Liam found the location of the bed-and-breakfast in an old-fashioned paper guidebook Team One had brought along. It was clos
e to a straight shot, despite the town’s twisty streets. They had to zag around a thick stand of something that looked like bamboo and felt like used chewing gum, but otherwise, they soon found themselves staring at a red door set in the face of a seething, breathing mound of flesh.

  “This is it,” Liam said. “You two ready?”

  “Yes.” Frances pushed her glasses up one more time and opened the door. A field of stars rushed out, surrounded them, ushered them inside. The red door slammed closed behind them.

  “This is fine,” Liam muttered. The interior of the B&B was a twinkling darkness, cool and wet. There was still a semblance of corridors and walls, but they’d oozed into dark mounds like stalactites. And so the matter of finding the Network’s old headquarters was simply a matter of stepping around and over, deeper into the starry darkness.

  Frances could perfectly picture how the Network’s headquarters had been before the magic swept through it: racks of servers with spaghetti wiring, takeaway boxes piled up on a card table. The wiring had transformed into shimmering, hissing curtains of living copper. Snakes with no head and no tail, like the ouroboros; she filed the thought away, to investigate the intersections between serpents and the flow of magic later.

  The takeaway boxes were still piled up in the corners, ordinary as dirt. From the smell of it, the little town had an unusually terrible curry place.

  “How should we proceed from here?” she asked. “I don’t see anything that would stand in for a mouse, much less a book.”

  “Something here started out as a book,” Asanti said. “Look around until you find it.”

  • • •

  Monsignor Angiuli rested upon his knees and wept. The Vatican had no lack of chapels, and this was his favorite of them all: not the most richly appointed, not the most inspiring, but it was very private. And the last thing he wanted in this moment was to be interrupted. He had to make a decision. And the decision was this: Do evil, or let evil be done.

  There was a modest crucifix on the altar here, carved from a dark wood. The Christ upon it was abstract, the face blank so viewers might project their own suffering upon it.

  “Help me,” Angiuli beseeched. His voice was a tapestry woven of grief and shock. “Must I order Team One to destroy the whole town? Please, you cannot ask me to kill all of them. Even the children? There was a small child, Arturo said as much. She was whole, just trapped. And all of them are innocent. Please. Please. This cannot be God’s will.”